


Jate Ori'vod

by Maggie_GoldenStar1530



Series: Dar'Manda One Shots [7]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Foundlings, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Pre-Canon, Protective Siblings, children are chaos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25774459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggie_GoldenStar1530/pseuds/Maggie_GoldenStar1530
Summary: Paz Vizsla wasn’t planning on taking one Foundling, much less two.Two years before the Great Purge, and thirteen years before the events of Season one, Paz Vizla's Foundling is a handful. A second one seems like a bad idea.
Relationships: Paz Vizsla & Original Character(s)
Series: Dar'Manda One Shots [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1753318
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Jate Ori'vod

Paz Vizsla wasn’t planning on taking one Foundling, much less two. 

Vayez was, to put it politely, a handful. He would get into anything. Climb anywhere. Fight anyone. The child was 6 years old, and already everyone -EVERYONE- told Paz that Vayez was the Foundling he deserved. 

Paz’s buir Treld had laughed the first time Paz had to fish Vayez out of the sewer. “I don’t know what you expected.” 

“A Foundling less bent on self-destruction.” 

“The wish of a ba’buir is that their children get the children they deserve. And you, ner ad, definitely have.” 

“How did you keep me from destroying the entire Base?” 

“You had an entire pack of vode to keep you out of trouble, or you had to keep them out of trouble. Between the lot of you, someone was around to keep an eye on your helmet.” 

Even through his helmet, Treld could see Paz’s scowl. “Are you saying I should get a bunch more?”

His buir had shrugged and sauntered off, and Paz went to drag Vayez out of the engine of one of the scout ships. 

The problem was, Paz mused after he finally got the kid to sleep, that Vayez thought he was brave, kotep, but in reality he was jareor. Reckless. Ridiculously so. He wanted to see everything, learn everything, do everything, and wasn’t concerned about the laws of physics or gravity or the limits a six year old’s body could take. 

He was a Vizsla, Paz admitted. He hadn’t quite expected it of a kid he’d found wandering the streets of a backwater fishing planet, barefoot and hungry. But he’d looked up with big dark eyes, and so Paz had brought him home. And as soon as he’d slept for a week and eaten more food than some of the recruits, he started moving and wouldn’t stop.

He ran around Paz’s quarters at mach 10 speeds, without a lot of control, so he would knock into everything- absolutely everything. He’d claim he wasn’t hungry, then an hour later demand food- no not THAT food, other food. Paz once left after Vayez had gone to sleep- and he was completely asleep- just for one brief conversation about scouting missions planned for the next month. He was gone for less than fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes in which the child should have been asleep, and by the time he’d gotten back the entire living room was a shambles, and the kid was sacked out in the middle of the mess. 

There was no doubt who had caused the mess. None at all. 

Then there was the incident with the armor of Pre Vizsla. 

There wasn’t much of the armor left in the possession of the family- just the front cuirass and one of the pauldrons. Vayez was still a small child (he was beginning to fill out, and it looked like there was a chance he’d grow up to be a barrel-chested man), but he’d seen the cuirass hanging on the wall of the Vizsla karyai and decided that it was the right size for a sled. 

The problem was there was no snow. There was, however, a slag heap near the mines, and the gravel was small enough to make sledding…. Possible. 

Not advisable, but possible. 

Vayez knew that safety was important, so when he took the cuirass, he took the pauldron as well. And put it on his head. No one had given him a helmet of his own yet, so this would have to do. 

He managed to make three trips down the slag heap before anyone got word to Paz, and was halfway up for a fourth run before Paz snatched him off the heap, cuirass and all, and flew them back down to the compound. He was so furious, he silently took the cuirass- now scratched to hell- and sent Vayez into his room, still wearing the pauldron on his head. 

Treld Vizsla had laughed his ass off. 

He was exhausting. Paz loved the kid, but he was _exhausting_. 

Life for Foundlings on Concordia wasn’t particularly easy. While technically, Mandalore wasn’t at war with the Empire, and technically, neutrality meant not raising an army, both Mandalore and the remnants of Death Watch on Concordia remained on a wartime footing. 

It wasn’t as intense as when Paz’s generation grew up, but the Empire still made Foundlings. It was rarer for a squad to go out and collect them - Mandalorians needed a reason to be in Empire space, and “cleaning up after your mess to prevent you turning these children into drones” wasn’t an acceptable one. 

But they did what they could. 

When word came that a small uprising on Vrakau had been brutally put down, a small squadron had gone to see what they could find. It wasn’t terribly uncommon to find blasters left behind that could be salvaged, or other useful things, and they could learn things about the tactics the Empire was using from looking at the wreckage left behind. 

And sometimes, sometimes they’d find survivors. Sometimes they’d be able to gather enough of them to bring them somewhere safe so they could try to salvage a community out of what was left behind. Sometimes they just needed a little help to pull themselves together, and sometimes…

Sometimes there was no one left. There was one town Paz remembered where the lone survivor was an old man who’d been in the mountains, watching the herds, and came back to find his entire life shattered. The Mandalorians had offered, cajoled, begged to bring him somewhere else, but he had demurred, saying that his life had begun there, his life had all happened there, and he would wait for it to end there. 

They’d left him with some rations and a communicator, in case he changed his mind, and Paz had watched him disappear into a small dot in the distance as his ship lifted away. 

He’d never called. Paz hadn’t expected him to, but he’d hoped. 

In this case, there were three children. Two siblings, brothers, and a four year old girl with big dark eyes and hollow cheeks and grasping fingers. Paz had picked her up, and asked what her name was. 

She’d mumbled a sound, and Paz said, “Vha?” She nodded. 

Paz had expected to turn her over to the creche and they’d find someone for her. But she had trustingly curled up in his lap and he found he was wobbling on the idea. He knew that a second Foundling when Vayez was such a handful was a bad idea. He knew that. It was asking for more chaos than he was really prepared to deal with.

He was not going to keep this Foundling. 

But she was so trusting. And fell asleep before they even lifted off. Din Djarin had shrugged at him. “Sometimes they choose you, I guess.” 

“I’m not keeping her.”

Din had just given him a look before moving on. 

Vayez had been asleep with his cousins when Paz got home with the girl. It was late, Paz reasoned. He couldn’t deposit her in the creche this late. She was already asleep. She would be scared and it was already a lot of new things. So he tucked her into Vayez’s bed and went to sleep, fully intending to wake up before his buir brought Vayez home. 

He shouldn’t have been surprised to have been woken up by a screech of indignation. 

At all. 

Paz managed to slam his bucket on before going out to find Vayez, spitting mad, Vha, in dire need of a bath, cowering in the corner, and his buir, laughing his ass off. 

“Another one?”

“No! She just needed a place to sleep tonight. I’ll take her to baar’ur and get her cleaned up, and then I’ll take her to the creche.” 

And Vha had looked at him with the big, dark eyes and he felt his resolve waver a little more. The baar’ur checked her over, said she needed food and a bath (which, to be fair, was almost universally true of every Foundling they brought in), gave her some vaccinations, and sent them on their way. 

The creche was empty when Paz brought her by, and she’d looked at him with the big. dark eyes again, and he sighed. “Let’s get you some food.”

The pile of Vizsla Foundlings were in the karyai, and Paz got Vha a bowl of food and sent her over to the other kids. She eyed them all solemnly before her eyes lit on Vayez, and immediately went to sit next to him. He huffed in annoyance and tried to move away, but she just followed him.

“You said it, yet?”

“No! She just… needs some people around. The creche was empty.”

“The other two were given souls.” Treld said, pointedly. 

“You really think adding another kid will _help_?”

Treld watched as Vha continued to follow Vayez around the table. “Might.” 

That night the creche was still empty and Paz tucked the girl into a cot he’d borrowed and put in Vayez’z room. Vayez had looked down at her suspiciously, then up at Paz. “Is she staying, buir?”

Paz opened his mouth to say _no, of course not,_ but the words stuck in his throat. “Get in bed. Goodnight, ad’ika.” 

“Goodnight, buir.” Vazey snuggled down into his blankets and Paz handed him his stuffed strill. “Does she have a stuffie?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Oh.” Vayez thought for a second, then handed the strill back to Paz. “She can borrow mine.” 

When Paz went to wake them up in the morning, Vha was curled up in Vayez bed, and Vayez was sprawled out, like he normally did, with one leg over her. Paz sighed, shut the door, pulled off his helmet, and rubbed his face. There really was only one thing to do at this point. 

He just hoped they would all survive it. He went back in the room and woke up the pair of them.

“Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, Vha Vizsla…” 

She followed Vayez _everywhere._

Everywhere he went, there was a smaller shadow behind him. The number of times someone heard, “NO, vod’ika, you CAN’T COME,” per day was staggering. And every time she would pause, and then set her jaw and stomp off after him, clutching her strill stuffie. 

Paz had to admit that her following Vayez everywhere was useful, after the third time in a week Vayez whined to him that having Vha follow him everywhere was “keeping me from having any fun!” He now had a shadow that kept him from doing some of the more dangerous things he might otherwise get himself into. Now he had a vod’ika to be responsible for. 

No one had needed to pull Vayez out of an engine for a month. 

Two months after Vha arrived, Vayez got his first training helmet. It was duraplastic, very light, and designed to begin to train a child’s neck muscles and start to work with the limited peripheral vision. 

All Mandalorian children run into walls when they first get their training helmets. Some of them do this once, just to see, and some do it as many times as possible to find out at what point it no longer becomes fun. Vayez Vizla made a game of trying to see exactly how far he could bounce off a wall. 

Vha Vizla, not to be left behind even though she was too young for even the lightest training helmet, trotted with purpose to the kitchen. Once the skraan’ur’s back was turned, she swiped a pot, plonked it on her head, and ran to join her brother. He blinked as she came careening around the corner and went smashing straight into the wall. 

Vayez blinked. She giggled. He grinned, and charged at the wall. 

It was Din that found them, staggering in circles, helmet and pot dented more times that he cared to count. After taking stock, he’d turned on his heel to go find Paz. Paz could deal with his own Foundlings, especially when one or both was likely going to puke at this rate. 

Paz found them both staring at the wall like they expected it to move, and cleared his throat. As one they both turned to look at him, swaying slightly, Vayez with a solid crack running down his helmet, and Vha with the pot sliding down over her eyes- she tilted her head far back so she could see him.

“Hi Buir!” She ran to give him a hug around the knees, as was her usual habit, and Paz sighed. They might have to get her a helmet earlier than planned, at this rate, if only to keep her from killing herself.

“Come on. We need to get you shu’shuke check out by the baar’ur.” 

“Buir, what’s a shu’shuk?”

Vha was determined to make sure she caught up with Vayez in all things. After a talk with his buir about the importance of helping out your family, of protecting your vode, but especially your vod’ika, of how he was intrumental in helping Vha learn what she needed to, Vayez threw himself into training with her as hard as he threw himself into everything else. 

“He’s got the makings of an al’verde,” one of the younger Armorers said, nodding her horned helmet in approval. “And she’ll be the strong second in command he needs.” 

Paz nodded in agreement. It was early yet, and a lot could happen, but he knew that the bond between siblings was sometimes the strongest. And, as he watched them practice stalking something (he decided he didn’t need to know what, unless they brought it back for him) down the dark corridor, he thought that maybe, just maybe, his buir had been right. A sibling was what Vayez had needed. 

And, he thought, smiling to himself at Vha, he grew up with a boisterous bunch of siblings and cousins. Of course one Foundling wasn’t enough. 

_Thirteen Years Later_

“Buir! What’s happening?”

“Stormtroopers. Alor ordered me to take the Foundlings and their buire to safety.”

“The beroya?”

“He got out safely with the child.” 

“We’re to hold the defenses?” 

“This is the Way. The Foundlings are the…” 

“...are the future, Buir. We know. Ret’urcye mhi.” 

“This is the Way. Ret’urcye mhi, Buir.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> A few notes: Vayez and Vha appeared as older Foundlings in Escape Night, which (checks notes) takes place when Vayez is almost 14, and Vha is 12. Not appearing in this story is their youngest vod, Faris (Faris appears as a supporting player in the main Dar'Manda series). 
> 
> The adoption ceremony is called the "gai bal manda" or "name and soul." Hence my idea of Foundlings being officially adopted as being called "given souls." 
> 
> The true main inspiration for this, though, was the addition of a kitten in a certain household, and her relationship with her older brother. 
> 
> Mando'a Translations
> 
> Jate: Good  
> Ori'vod: Big Brother  
> buir: Parent  
> ba’buir: Grandparent  
> ner ad: My child  
> vode: siblings, comrades  
> jareor: recklessly risk your life, act suicidally (negative connotation - foolish, not brave)  
> karyai: main living room of a traditional north Mandalorian house - a single big chamber for eating, talking, resting, and even the last secure stronghold when under attack  
> baar’ur: medic  
> ad’ika: Little one  
> Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad: adoption vow - lit. I know your name as my child.  
> vod’ika: Younger sibling  
> shu’shuk: Disaster (plural: Shu'shuke)  
> al’verde: Commander  
> beroya: bounty hunter  
> Ret’urcye mhi: Goodbye - lit. *Maybe we'll meet again*


End file.
